Rousse Rant: "When the Wind Blows"

With the US refusing Russian demands to move the missile shield and NATO/Russian relations becoming frigid, The Manic Mainer continues to ratchet paranoia with the 1986 British animation When the Wind Blows.

WHEN THE WIND BLOWS
Directed by Jimmy Murakami
1986

THE BASICS
Jim and Hilda Bloggs are a very loving, sweet and naive couple living in England's Sussex County. After reading that international relations are deteriorating rapidly in a newspaper at the library, Jim decides to build a standard rudimentary shelter as suggested in "Protect and Survive." Three days later a Soviet missile detonates several miles away, heavily damaging their house. Jim and Hilda, thinking this will be just like World War II, have no worries about the crisis, even though all services and normality has stopped, and they're feeling ill. Surely, the government has everything under control and will come soon...


THE GOOD
This film, if anything, shows the futility of nuclear war. Not in the facetious sense virtually everyone talks of. No, it horribly exposes, even more so than Threads, just how much of a fool's errand it is to think the government of a country, any country, can deal with the event of a nuclear exchange. Threads at least showed the government regulating food supplies. The Day After, its American counterpart, showed surviving Kansas officials practicing expositional aftermath plans (however comical they are). When the Wind Blows has nothing, not even that cynical optimism. Nothing works. And no one is coming. This is a terrible fact that the Bloggs can't seem to fathom.

The Bloggs... wow. They are completely clueless and naive about their fate. They don't even know who leads the Soviet Union or their own country! Needless to say, they have no idea about nuclear warfare. Being children during the Blitz, they are confident the war will blow over. Jim tries to explain to his wife the measures taken in preventing, during, and responding to an attack (cleverly interspersed with the powers preparing for war), but they're hopelessly incorrect. The fact he thinks the KGB is the SS, among others, shows that in a bitterly comical way.

Their innocence in the face of the end of the world is endearing in a heart aching way. The dark clouds of nuclear winter? Incoming rain. The horrid smell of burnt flesh? Early Sunday dinners. Their increasing illness? Nervousness about the attack. The lack of water and electricity; the missing milkman, newspaper boy, and traffic? War interrupting services. All the while, Jim proudly praises that "the powers that be" are handling the situation. This false hope is comforting to Jim and Hilda, and heart wrenching for us.


THE BAD
Again... I really can't think of anything here. It's not a masterpiece to be sure, but it's certainly an eloquent, tragic story of the futility of war.


THE VERDICT
I remember a story a friend of mine from Susquehanna's library staff told me when I was checking out books for a paper on the risks of nuking Iran. She said that in her hometown of Memphis, city and federal leaders constantly said and even showed there were plans to evacuate the city before the ICBMs found their target. Even then, as a little girl, she knew it was total garbage.

So is the message in this film. Any government plans for the aftermath or surviving a nuclear war are bunk at worst, half truths at best. They're a covering for a false sense of security, a safety blanket that we pray is fire and radiation proof. But deep down, we know they aren't.

Humans are fragile things, physically and psychologically. We need the idea of normality, continuity to function. Ripping those away, as we see with the Bloggs, shows that fact in a dark humored but tragic way.

I joke that I'm ratcheting fear about nuclear attack here at TMM by commenting on all these nuclear films. Perhaps I am, perhaps I'm not. But, I bring this one to my readers' attention for the simple, basic fact that we are hopelessly ignorant about those wingless birds of destruction, and what they will do to our worlds. I'm sure many Americans, gung-ho after 9/11 and the initial successes in Afghanistan and Iraq, think we can win a nuclear war, or that no one would dare launch back, much as the Bloggs did. They couldn't be more wrong. Perhaps, it's best to remain in such ignorance. Until you realize it's the worst thing you can do.

If there was any movie I would force George "all options are on the table" Bush and Vladimir "it would be unfortunate" Putin to watch, this would be it. Doesn't matter to me if it's a cartoon that's twenty years old. Shut up, watch, and think.

GRADE: A

BEST SCENE/LINE:
This is one film where this just can't be done. It has to be seen to believed... and I know one reader in particular who will therefore not believe it. In fact, you're reading this right now, aren't you!?

That about wraps up the British perspective of nuclear apocalypse... perhaps next time, the Yanks get it? There's a less depressing/expertly executed one I know of...